Literacy in American Lives

ISBN-13: 9780521783156 / Angielski / Twarda / 2001 / 272 str.

Madison) Deborah Brandt (University of Wisconsin

Opis

Literacy in American Lives traces the changing conditions of literacy learning over the past century as they were felt in the lives of ordinary Americans born between 1895 and 1985. The book demonstrates what sharply rising standards for literacy have meant to successive generations of Americans and how--as students, workers, parents, and citizens--they have responded to rapid changes in the meaning and methods of literacy learning in their society. Drawing on more than 80 life histories of Americans from all walks of life, the book addresses critical questions facing public education at the start of the twenty-first century.

Recenzje

"This book makes a significant contribution to literacy studies, and it deserves to be widely read. Brandt pushes us to reconsider many settled assumptions about how people learn to read and write, and she does it in lyrical prose that is a pleasure to read. I expect that we will be talking about and following the lead of her work for a long time." Rhetoric Review

Spis treści

Introduction: the pursuit of liberty; 1. Literacy, opportunity and economic change; 2. Literacy and illiteracy in documentary America; 3. Accumulating literacy: how four generations of one American family learned to write; 4. 'The power of it': sponsors of literacy in African American lives; 5. The sacred and the profane: reading vs. writing in popular memory; 6. The means of production: literacy and stratification at the 21st century; Conclusion.